Friends of the Orphan Signs makes use of abandoned road signs and creates collaborative, community-oriented public art projects in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Artist Pete Railand read all 168 texts submitted to the number posted on the sign, and made this artwork in response. He found discarded sign letters in a dumpster, and painted on them to make this. His black and white print of weeds is attached to the lower part of the sign.

This is the message from Taveyah, a teen from nearby Highland High
school. In January, 2011, a group of artist/educators formed an
afterschool art club at Highland with the goal of engaging local teens
in a collaborative design process to create new images to be
professionally produced and installed in a dilapidated sign along
Central Avenue.

Friends of the Orphan Signs thanks Matthew Terry of Nob Hill Development Association, who worked with us to create a permanent easement that grants this sign to the city of Albuquerque as a site for public art.

In March of 2011, one side of our sign was blown off during a night of fierce desert spring winds. There must have been a swirling explosion of letters, I found an H a block away.

Larry and Johnnie Plath, the mostly affable but sometimes gruff brothers who own Southwest Outdoor Electric sign company, had large pieces of used sign facing plastic lying around their shop- they cut it to size- approximately 15' x 5'. After I riveted new lettering tracks to the plastic, they used their lift to bolt it to the frame-we were back in business.

The new sign face doesn't fit exactly, and is somewhat bowed out, I got a submission not long after--- "he's fat, he's poofy, he's choska"--maybe this person was referring to the sign.

They could have been referring to their cat- this is Larry and Johnnie and their mouser, Princess.